I remembered the incident recently when I spotted remnants of chef pants on the street outside a sweatshop. I kept eleven of them.

Eleven Chef Pants Remnants is available in the PDF format; the technical bits about the PDF format are also available.

The burning pile of something or another is supposed to be a pair of Hitler's pants, the ones he was wearing on 20 July 1944 during the failed assassination attempt. The caption explains that the pants were destroyed to "prevent their symbolic worship of what Hitler stood for."

The whole thing sounds like a forgery, but it's hard to tell when it comes to the military. Army facts can be weirder than the strangest civilian fiction.

I've always enjoyed a good San Francisco earthquake, and this morning's tremor was no exception. The building creaked, and the big beam I sleep under creaked the loudest and squeaked the most. That was exciting: spare the fear and spoil the earthquake.

I once considered editing the sign myself to read "Please your cat," an idea I've since abandoned. "Please your dog" has been there so long it deserves to stay. Anyway, cats can take care of themselves.

I am, of course, not a bohemian at all, as was pointed out to me by my closest friend. "You're not a bohemian, dear, you're just white trash." I never thought of myself that way before, but she was absolutely right.

1. More productivity.

2. More ambition.

Pete didn't take it too seriously since at the time he was engaged to his great love of the thirties, an engagement that ended not too long after having his palm read. That's too bad, I suppose, but Pete's dealing with the situation with the energy, resourcefulness and good luck I'd expect. Pete makes his own fortune, which is always the best fortune. I must make a note to drop him a line in half a century and ask about his love life.

I was surprised at how amazed I was. After all, death seems like such a common occurrence; I hear about it every day in the news and see it every day on someone's plate. Had it been in a barrel of unwanted cats that had been "put to sleep" because there were no homes for them I wouldn't have been very disconcerted. That's the sad fate of millions of cats every year. Even if I saw some horrible video of a cat being butchered for someone's dinner, I probably would have only grimaced and turned away. I know that too happens all the time.

I suppose what was so disconcerting about today's discovery was the sheer ordinariness of it. The cat showed no signs of physical injury, it was just stretched out in the warm morning sun like so many other cats I've seen.

Perhaps the master brewers decided to cut costs on packaging to buy better hops, but I doubt it. It still tasted like the same blend of jet fuel and lighter fluid, but what a blend! That's the magic, or at least part of it.

It's late, so I'll leave the question of why they bother to make the caps resealable for another night.

When we got back to the laboratory, I mentioned how much I appreciated her warmth. I told her that a seven-person motorcycle would probably be very popular with Siberian commuters since the five riders sandwiched between the driver and the last passenger would be relatively warm.

Ali, who knows much more about motorcycles than I do, suggested such a bike wouldn't be commercially feasible because there are very few Siberian commuters.

I suggested they think about the example of the "unplugged" concerts that became popular several years ago. (In case you missed it, an "unplugged" concert involved musicians playing songs on acoustic instruments that they'd previously recorded using electric instruments.)

I advised them to consider an "undrugged" concert. This would involve musicians who usually perform under the influence of drugs performing completely sober for the novel occasion.

My friends thanked me for the free advice; they said it was well worth it and that I'd get a backstage pass if they presented an undrugged concert. I thanked them for their generosity, but said I wasn't interested: what's the point of a backstage pass if there's no free beer?

Since the bottle top now had a hole in it, I had no choice but to drink the entire bottle at once. The wine at the bottom of the bottle tasted much better than the wine at the top; I think the vintners may have blended varietals of different specific gravities.

I sat down in a lounge chair next to a guy who looked as out of place in the Rich Bastards Club as I did. I began a conversation by complaining about the beer and found he shared my opinion. I then went on to describe how I fooled the receptionist into letting me in and asked him how he got by her.

"I just showed her my card," he replied with a shrug.

"Card?" I asked. "I thought you had to fly a hundred kilometers a year to get one of those Rich Bastards Club cards."

"I do. I'm a drug dealer; I'm always flying."

Since English wasn't his native language, I wasn't sure whether he was trying to make a pun.

He said he might try my technique for amusement some day, but said it would be harder for him because, "unlike you, I don't look like a respectable businessman."

I've received a lot of insults, but few nastier than that. I went to get another beer, then sat at the opposite end of the Rich Bastards Club until it was time for my next flight.

This has been a bad year for transatlantic travel. First, there was the runaway Canadian weather balloon. In July, a huge Canadian weather balloon got loose and began drifting east. This was a very big deal because this was a very big balloon--about as tall as a fifty-story building. The balloon drifted across Canada and over the North Atlantic.

The balloon was so huge that it was a danger to commercial passenger jets. That's when the fun started. The Canadian Air Force scrambled two fighter jets to shoot down the runaway balloon. The pilots fired off a thousand rounds of ammo ... and didn't even hit it! Not once!

Now this is where things get curious, or at least paranoid. I remembered hearing the weather balloon story on several BBC radio broadcasts over several days, but there wasn't a single mention of the event anywhere on the BBC's extensive Internet site. I then looked elsewhere on the Internet, and couldn't find a single mention of the farce anywhere. Now I know it would be nearly impossible to kill a story like that on every Internet site, but empirical evidence suggests that the embarrassed Canadians just might have pulled it off.

And then there are the grunting cod. Norwegian scientists have discovered the cods' mating grunts are loud enough to mask the sound of "suspicious vessels" (read Russian submarines). The scientists have suggested maritime traffic avoid the cods' spawning ground during the height of the mating season in February and March.

How sadly ironic. My friends on the east coast of North America are facing financial problems because of the collapse of the cod fishery at the same time the Norwegians are living in fear of the hordes of the grunting beasties. Despite the hardships and dangers, it's somewhat reassuring to know that transatlantic travel isn't entirely routine.

Alain's lucky that there aren't many analog clocks around.

Anon submitted a piece to the New Yorker under the name of Bruce McCall, a regular contributor. (To confuse things even more, Bruce McCall isn't Bruce McCall's real name, but that's another story.) New Yorker Articles Editor Susan Morrison responded with "gushing praise" and an invitation to join her and comedian/ actor/ New Yorker writer Steve Martin for lunch.

Instead of following through on the hoax, Anon took his/her stepfather's advice to "get away from the whole thing as fast as I could" and withdrew the piece.

Too bad.

It would have been nice if Anon had the chutzpah to complete what s/he started, although the success or failure of the endeavor wouldn't have had much effect on what many people know and many more suspect: when it comes to publishing, who you know and what your name is counts for a lot more than who you are and what you write.

I remember reading a few years ago about some writers who tried the same experiment the other way around. They submitted famous novels in the form of typed manuscripts to big publishers under unknown pseudonyms. The publishers, of course, rejected them and provided hilarious literary criticism of what the authors could do to improve their first drafts.

Ha ha ho ho and hee hee!

I am that louse.

"They do?" she asked.

I replied that was in fact true, but that "guest of honor" was a euphemism for butchering poor Rudolph. I told her that Santa and Ms. Claus had a three-acre plate of Rudolph steaks and the reindeer and elves all ate Rudolph burgers.

That was a big mistake on my part.

Her face turned read, and she screamed "That's not true! You're lying!"

"I can prove it," I said. "There's no electricity at the North Pole. Why do you think all the glowing lights on Santa's tree are all red? Those are the noses of all the previous Rudophs. And why do you think Rudolph never gets old like all the other reindeer? That's because they pick a young tender one each year to be the new Rudolph."

"You stink!" she shrieked before she ran away crying.

I was upset, too, since I didn't get a chance to explain to her that all the elves are really bad children that Santa has kidnapped; all the elves are really slave labor.

Bah wretched humbug.

Carole had cooled down by the time she got here. Nevertheless, she said she was thinking of making a tampon out of real semtex and mailing it to the chief inspector. I told her that was a bad idea: practical jokes are usually wasted on both the police and the French.

The author makes three main points:

1. Being a modern artist is itself an art and requires a talented performer. The artist must be able to live in a "bohemian" lifestyle and at the same time remain in the public eye.

2. The public has no say as to what is popular or not in the art world. The artists among themselves, the art critics, and the museum and gallery curators decide what is or is not accepted into the canon of true art.

3. Over time, the art theory has become the true Art in the modern art setting. In the historical debate of "which comes first, the art or the art theory," art theory has clearly pulled ahead. Flatness and realistic nonrealism have become the prototypes for the creation of any art. Even the printed word suffices to be considered art.

I agree with most of that, which leaves me wondering whether I should read Wolfe's entire piece. If the author did a good job distilling the original to its essence, then the rest would be artful filler. In addition, I generally prefer to read things that challenge my beliefs rather than support them.

As with most of my reading, I'll leave it to chance. If someone shoves a copy of The Painted Word into my hands and says "read this" then I will. If they don't I probably won't.

It's not the usual problem of asking someone how a prematurely announced project is progressing; Bruce is one of the few people I know who may be expected to complete what he said he'd do. That's in marked contrast to the legions of people who've made the fatal mistake of announcing "I'm writing a novel." Such novels are never ever completed. (In a rare demonstration of common sense, I both started and aborted my first novel in complete secrecy.)

I have a semantic obstacle in querying Bruce about his recordings, a problem that didn't exist twenty years ago. Back then, I would have simply asked him if his album was done, album defined as "a phonograph record." These days, only a minuscule percentage of new recordings are released as phonograph records, so now I don't know what to say.

Nestlé launched Nescafé in 1938 after eight years of research. Instant Maxwell House coffee followed in 1942, but wasn't available to civilians until after World War Two.

Although Nestlé's vile invention hasn't generated as much human suffering as, say, its third world baby formula marketing scam, it could be argued that the misery generated by anti-coffee is more universal.

Example: a friend told me about her overpriced dinner in a pretentious Colombian restaurant. After the meal, a waiter came by with a silver pitcher and a starched white linen bag hanging from his arm. Anyone who asked for coffee got a cup of tepid water followed by a silver spoonful of instant coffee from the bag!

Example: on my first trip to Greece, I noticed that almost every menu featured three drinks I'd rarely if ever heard of. Retsina was great, ouzo was passable, and Nes was Nescafé!

Example: prepare a strong cup of coffee made with freshly-roasted beans and a cup of instant anti-coffee. Compare and contrast.

One camp maintains that this millennium ends on 31 December 1999, the pedant faction insists than the next millennium won't begin until 1 January 2001. I figure I'll play it safe and celebrate every night between the two dates.

I have a sinister ulterior motive for this approach. It's been over half a lifetime since I bought a new Leica, and I quite fancy one of the new ones with a light meter inside it. It is of course a mistake to hope to achieve even a modicum of satisfaction from consumerism in general and technology in particular, but hope springs eternal. Especially on the eve of a new year.